1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to recovery from abnormalities in a logistics system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a logistics system, objects are transported by transport devices, such as stacker cranes, transport vehicles, loading and unloading conveyors, automated forklifts, and automated guided vehicles, and the like. JP2000-309408A discloses displaying occurrence locations of abnormalities on a monitor, and displaying a method of dealing with the abnormalities on the monitor. According to the method described in JP2000-309408A, a logistics system may be recovered with respect to hardware aspects in accordance with the display on the monitor.
If an abnormality related to the transport device occurs, it may become impossible to carry out the initially planned transport tasks. For example, when loading an object into a cell on a shelf from a station is planned, it may be impossible to load the object due to the fact that the destination cell is preoccupied by another object. This abnormality is called a preoccupation abnormality. If there is actually a preoccupation object, then the object has to be unloaded into another cell, but this work is carried out outside the framework of the normal control performed with the controller of the logistics system. Therefore, if the unloading destination of the object is changed with the recovery operation, the inventory data is not changed automatically. Therefore, although a recovery in terms of “hardware” aspects has been possible, a secondary problem may occur in that data, etc., due to the fact that the storage position of the object is not changed in accordance with the recovery operation. Since the operator concentrates on the hardware recovery and tends to forget about changing the inventory data, etc., problems of this kind are liable to occur.